War by water

Express Tribune

21-05-2025

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If rivers could talk, the Indus would not whisper; it would thunder. Not in rage, but sorrow for being mislabeled, mistreated, and now almost killed.
The Persians, unable to pronounce 'Sindhu', called it 'Hindu'. The Greeks turned that into 'Indos'. And the British, true to colonial form, repackaged the theft as 'India'. Thus, a nation claimed its identity from a river it neither owns nor protects. But history's irony doesn't end there, because today, India seeks to strangle the very Sindhu that gave it its name, damming its veins, drying its pulse, and silencing the waters that once defined its soul.
The same India that rushed to choke the river's throat with Baglihar and Kishanganga, damming it upstream without pause. The same India that throttles the very waters that gave it its name, then cries foul before the world. The same India that launched missiles into Muzaffarabad, Kotli and Bahawalpur, not into barracks, but into beds, tearing through silence, catching families mid-dream, mid-breath.
This isn't water diplomacy. It's water warfare, plain and ruthless. It's the slow throttling of a river beneath the ribbon-cuttings of 'development', the murder of ecosystems scripted as strategy. And behind it all, a state that floods headlines with peace while bleeding a nation dry, one dam, one diversion, one deceit at a time.
Narendra Modi has once again spun a narrative of victimhood. We've seen this script before: Uri in 2016, Pulwama in 2019, and now Pahalgam – each one a conveniently timed disaster, tailored for political mileage. And each time, it plays out the same: Indian bombs scream through sovereign skies, Pakistan gets the blame, and the world swallows the story whole, no questions asked.
But this time, Modi miscalculated. Pakistan's silence didn't just end, it shattered.
We responded. Six Indian jets downed, a brigade headquarters reduced to ash. This wasn't retaliation, it was clarity. Because Pakistan may bleed, but it does not plead. Our restraint isn't weakness; it's strategy. And when provoked, we roar.
As India weaponises water, international media remains complicit. When weapons are dams instead of missiles, global voices fall silent. Once praised for peaceful water sharing, the IWT is outdated, unconcerned with climate realities, and ecologically blind.
India's selective amnesia is as dangerous as it is deliberate. Water, sacred in Hinduism, worshipped at the ghats of the Ganges and Yamuna, is twisted into a weapon against Pakistan, desecrating the very beliefs it claims to hold dear. Denying water isn't just a strategy; it's cruelty with precedent. Think of Karbala, etched into the soul of every Muslim, where Imam Hussain and his family were denied even a drop. That act of thirst, that ultimate injustice, became a symbol of tyranny across centuries.
And yet, India, where Imam Hussain is venerated, where his stand against oppression is honoured in both ritual and verse, mirrors that very cruelty. It turns the tap off on Pakistanis who depend on the Indus. The hypocrisy is not just galling, it's obscene. Further south, where Sindhu meets Sindh, the river no longer arrives as a giver of life, but as a stranger.
Once the heartbeat of a civilisation, it now drags its feet, bringing salt instead of sustenance. With barely a tenth of its flow left, the delta wilts, mangroves die, nets stay empty, the children of Sindh grow up not knowing the river that once defined them, just sip bitterness where sweet water once ran. And still, the world looks away.
From upstream dams to missiles on our soil, India's escalation is deliberate. These provocations are designed to destabilise Pakistan. The world may bite its tongue, but we won't. This is aggression, methodical, relentless, and cloaked in the language of diplomacy.
The Sindhu is not a favour. It's our inheritance, our identity, our lifeline. And the Indus does not kneel, not to politics, not to power. Should India wage war using water, remember Karbala's timeless lesson: refusing water has never stifled righteousness; it has only made it more pronounced.